We keep saying that ubiquitous connectivity will change how we work and how we play in the future. But did you ever think it would provide you with unlimited vacation days?

According to an article in the Sunday Boston Globe magazine, it does at Netflix. Netflix is one of the visionary companies who has done away with the traditional corporate policy of “two or three weeks off a year” and instituted a policy of “no set number of vacation days.” Salaried employees are allowed to spend as much or as little time out of the office as they want. The catch? They still have to ensure that they get all their work done, vacation days or not.

Now not requiring employees to take vacation may simply be corporate speak for no vacation at all as mobile phone-tethered executives check in as easily from Chile as from Chicago and answer email before and after their golf games. But what goes unsaid in the article is that Anywhere networks have given employees that choice. There is no rule that says employees must stay connected while on vacation. Connectivity simply gives them the option.

The Anywhere Network is reshaping the balance between work life and home life, and businesses and employees are still groping for the right answer. We can’t really say if the Netflix solution is the right or wrong approach (although from where I sit, it sound eminently reasonable assuming that appropriate management responsibility and authority). But there is one upside to businesses not mentioned in the article and that bears contemplation: when employees are entitled to unlimited vacation days, businesses don’t have to pay employees for unused ones.

Josh Martin beat me to the punch with his post on the Apple press release this morning (curse you!), but I thought I’d add a bit more context to the story.
Those one million iPhone 3Gs sold this weekend provide a pretty good clue for why Apple and AT&T’s activation servers are slammed and barely able to keep up. This was a big deal. Why? Because not only was it about 4 times more phones than Apple had to deal with last year at this time, but because it is probably the largest consumer electronics launch in history.

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Josh Martin noted this morning that the Boston Apple store had a significant line of people this morning waiting for 3G iPhones. My son Robert and I also stopped by and estimated the line at about 500 people. Since Robert is in the market for an iPhone 3G, we thought we’d stop by again at noontime to see if there was still a line. These photos show that there was, albeit shorter. My guess is that there are still about 250 people in line as seen in the attached photo. But we have much to be thankful for — at least it isn’t the crowd of more than 1,000 that queued up outside the Softbank Mobile store in Tokyo. And Japanese consumers are notoriously hard to impress with a mobile phone.

I’m sure there are people still queuing up for the iPhone throughout the day, but I wonder whether those lines throughout the day are mostly because AT&T required that Apple do in-store activation for iPhones. Last year, Apple sold out their iPhone stocks in hours because consumers could activate them at home through iTunes. This year, perhaps not so much.

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Today’s New York Times nominates Google as the Zen Master of the Anywhere Internet era because it is using network effects like Microsoft did during the PC revolution. Personally, I like Google’s chief economist’s reason better: the company focuses on learning from experience:

Google, it seems, is the emerging dominant company in the Internet era, much as Microsoft was in the PC era. The study of networked businesses, market competition and antitrust law is being reconsidered in a new context, shaped by Google. Google’s explanation for its large share of the Internet search market — more than 60 percent — is simply that it is a finely honed learning machine. Its scientists constantly improve the relevance of search results for users and the efficiency of its advertising system for advertisers and publishers.

“The source of Google’s competitive advantage is learning by doing,” said Hal R. Varian, Google’s chief economist.

But this isn’t your father’s learning by a few trials and errors. Google learns from what is rapidly becoming a new and powerful trend: organizing and learning from the petabytes of data it collects.

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Isn’t it amazing that some people can tell a week in advance when they are going to be sick? If you’re one of those people who senses that the 24-hour iPhone flu is going to wrack your body starting next Thursday, you should be sure to read these iPhone 3G Sick Day Tips. Oh, and remember that if you call in sick and stand in line at the Boylston St. Apple store, we can see you.

Meanwhile, Happy Fourth of July America; happy weekend to everyone else. And by the way, if you think the above is crazy, note that people are already camping out in line at the New York 5th Avenue Apple Store.

I now officially declare cloud computing a mainstream trend. I say that not just because corporate America is embracing cloud computing; Agatha Poon’s and Gary Chen’s June 2008 report, Is Cloud Computing a New Force to Disrupt the Telcos’ Business? says it is. But the data point that put me over the top was this Washington Post article noting that email SPAM-generating companies are now avid users of Cloud Computing.
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I’ve just begun researching a report with a working title of “Best of the Mobile Web.” As a result, I was pleasantly surprised to see that not only does OpenTable now seat three million diners a month, but it also has launched a mobile version of its web site. For those unfamiliar with the company, the premise is simple: it allows you to electronically find and book restaurant reservations. It is a great solution for those times when you want to plan a great meal in a new area, or simply want to explore new restaurants.

I think the mobile web version of this service is a perfect example of what the mobile web is good for. It has a simple, clear function, namely making restaurant reservations. It works on many mobile platforms; the fact it works on my BlackBerry’s limited browser is testament to its versatility. And it eschews Flash, graphics, and scripting in favor of a standard HTML pages that load quickly, even over slow wireless networks.

It’s too early to claim that OpenTable will be one of the best mobile web sites for my report. Every site has to be evaluated according to 25 Anywhere web criteria, so great content alone isn’t enough to land a spot on the list. Nonetheless, I have to say that OpenTable.com certainly has Anywhere appeal. After all, what’s the point of ubiquitious connectivity if you can’t find a place to eat dinner?

The Wall Street Journal yesterday raised a few Anywhere eyebrows with this paragraph at the end of an article titled Firms Hitch Wagons to iPhone. The paragraph that caused this fuss was as follows:

And those that have been sanctioned by Apple are finding out too late that they have guessed wrong about the depth to which Apple is willing to help them. Makers of location-based software expected to benefit from the new iPhone’s global-positioning system. Yet they are finding out that Apple won’t support “applications designed or marketed for real-time route guidance.” The clause in the iPhone developer tool-kit agreement essentially voids months of work by TomTom NV and other navigation providers.

Could this be? Could Apple be an Anywhere spoilsport and refuse to allow location-based applications?

Now, being a registered developer, I have the software development kits (SDK) for both the Apple iPhone and Google Android [shameless research plug: Yankee Group clients should look for a Decision Note comparison of the two SDKs and how developers should choose between them to be published soon]. Unfortunately, the Apple SDK license terms are confidental so I can’t quote chapter and verse here (software license restrictions and end user license agreements are a rant for another post). However, I can provide my personal interpretation of Apple’s legaleze, which luckily isn’t too tricky. Full disclosure: I am not a lawyer, and this opinion should not be construed as legal advice. Always consult your own attorney on legal matters.

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The devices we use to access the Anywhere Network are truly legion — and getting more so. Gartner Group got a lot of headlines this week noting that one billion PCs are now in use worldwide. As one of the articles notes, that means that there’s a PC nowadays for one out of every 6.7 people on Earth. That’s an amazing accomplishment.

What’s I’ve been struck by lately, though, is how last century this business of counting PCs is. Yes, they are incredibly important devices. But PCs took an amazingly long time to reach this billion units from their humble beginnings with the Apple I introduced in 1976. Meanwhile, another personal device technology — call them PDs — invented around the same time has grown to more than 3.44 billion units, according to Yankee Group’s latest Global Mobile Forecast. That’s 1 PD for every 2 people on Earth. Of course, we know PDs better as mobile phones.

Today’s mobile phones make calls, keep our contact lists, take pictures, exchange email, do instant messaging, and can even help you navigate — and yet unlike PCs, these devices fit in our pockets. Unlike PCs , we rely on our PDs to always work, to be secure, and to become electronic extensions of ourselves. For example, in Japan, many teenage girls decorate their cell phones and their nails to match — you don’t see that happening with PCs. And, according to a recent study, people are more likely to leave their homes without their keys and cash than they are without their mobile phones; PCs, not so much.

And Yankee Group’s research shows that this trend of PDs outgunning PCs for the hearts and minds of consumers isn’t likely to stop soon. As we’ve noted in our Yankee Group Teens and Technology surveys, texting has wedded an entire generation of teen-age users to their mobile phones with a loyalty that their PC-centric and voice-addicted elders just don’t understand. And an upcoming Anywhere Enterprise report will discuss the future of Anywhere mobile applications. Hint: it’s easier to wean executives from their laptops than their BlackBerry PDs nowadays.

So bravo to the billion PCs in the world. Just don’t expect the 3.5 billion PDs on the Anywhere Network to wait for them to catch up.

I had to read this article about the AT&T lawyers telling the FCC that early termination fees for mobile phones are good for consumers a couple times (including the Ars Technica article it links to) to make sure I understood what AT&T’s lawyers were saying. Specifically, Gizmodo cut to the heart of the matter with this:

“In this case, with the iPhone 3G, it [subsidies and early termination fees] basically lets you walk away with a iPhone 3G that you can use on T-Mobile for $374.”

So think about that; should this scenario be true, you would be able to buy an ATT-less iPhone 3G for $199+$174 early termination fee — that’s less than the locked version one iPhone. We live in interesting pricing times.

Lest anyone get too excited, it seems to me that the authors left out some details, namely that the iPhone 3G would have to be unlocked for it to work on T-Mobile. I don’t think AT&T’s early termination fee is going to do that for you, nor will iTunes activate your iPhone 3G on T-Mobile. And this is still a GSM device, meaning you’ll never use your iPhone 3G on Verizon’s CDMA network.

But assuming that third parties will develop unlocking software for the iPhone 3G just as they did for the original iPhone, this technique could make entrepreneurial iPhone exporters very happy — they’ll get a nice price cut too.